Curation matters
A Tale of being Curated
What happens when your story is curated
UPDATE: OCTOBER 2020
Sadly, Medium is no longer sending Emails or even “in-house Notifications” that a story has been curated, since Oct 2020. When you go to your Stats page for your story, you just see “Chosen for further distribution” and there’s no way of telling which Topics your story was curated under. In the interests of history, I am keeping this following article available.
Pre-October 2020
I am writing this to explain what happens, partly, when your Medium Story is curated.
My Story “How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed” which was published in “The Ascent” on April 29, 2019, was curated on Tuesday 7 May 2019 at 7.30 a.m my time. 😍 💛 😆
I live in the GMT + 8 time zone, so that time would have been 7.30 p.m. on Monday 6 May, in Eastern U.S.A. time.
I woke up that morning in Australia, where I live, and went to work. When I returned home, I browsed through my in-house Medium notifications (by clicking on the bell at the top right). I saw the following.
Imagine my astonishment when I read the words “Medium’s curators selected How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed. 😲
Clicking on that Notification took me straight to that Story.
Did you know that you can go to a Medium story that you wrote, then click on the little “wheel’ or “cog” icon, and click on View stats to see Statistics on just that Story?
When you click on View stats for a curated Story, the Stats page will show you that the Story was curated, with Distributed by Curators in xxx above stats for Total Views, Read Ratio & Lifetime Earnings. 😌
As at Friday 10 May 2019, at 2.00 p.m. W.A. time, being 3 days after my Story was curated, the information below appeared for this curated story.
I always wondered what actually happens when one’s Story is curated. Now I know!
Hovering my mouse over the question mark in the circle next to SELF, brought up the following information.
I was really excited about that information, and then clicked on the word SELF which is the Topic (not a Tag) that my Story was curated under, and this took me to the “home page” or the Landing page, if you like, of recent Stories “curated” or fed under the Topic name “SELF.”
Click below to go directly to the Topic page SELF, if you want to. 😄
UPDATE: The page below goes to the TAG NAME “Self” — it used to go to a dedicated TOPIC PAGE called “Self”. If you want to see an example of a good old DEDICATED Topic Page (dedicated meaning a nice page on the Medium website with hand-picked stories under a topic name), click here.
Did you know that the labels or links across the top of the Medium home page go EITHER to a “feed” of Stories under a particular Topic, OR to a Medium run Collection (the latter also called a Medium Anthology or a Medium-run Publication)?
For example “ONEZERO” and “ELEMENTAL” are Medium run collections, and SELF and STARTUPS are Topic names.
Clicking on MORE will bring up a full list of Topics as created by Medium.
Tags and Topics are not always the same in Medium, and I have written about this in the section headed “Tagging Stories” in my Story titled “4 Months on Medium: what I have achieved.”
Here are the Tags which I used for my Story “How to Stop feeling overwhelmed.”
Now, to this day I don’t know if having the Tag “Self” figured into this Story being selected by the Curator that day, but I can say that I have used the Tag “Self” in another Story that I wrote, which was not curated.
I think that Medium states that the Curators don’t look at Tags to choose Stories to curate, but who really knows what an individual person does when it comes to curation.
Does she/he only look at the Story Title, and then read the whole Story if the Title appeals to her/him?
Does she/he look at all Stories of some writers, although couldn’t time spent on such be also spent on actively looking for good content by writers who have not yet had a Story curated?
Normally I wouldn’t include “The Ascent” being the name of the Publication my Story appeared in, but this time around, for who knows why, I did. 😃
Anyhow this article aims to show what one sees, for those who have not yet had a Medium Story curated, and later in this article, I will include some analysis or reflection on what curation of my Story may mean to me.
As part of the curation process, I checked my Emails (and you should know it’s important to have email notifications from Medium turned on) and was thrilled to see the following email.
Did you know that you can receive Emails from Medium, by clicking on your Avatar (little round picture at the top right) then clicking on Settings? Scroll down and make sure that the following are selected.
💛 💚 💙Then I had an “I was Curated on Medium” Party!
Well I was a little overwhelmed, ironically, but it was a good “overwhelm”, more of a thoughtfulness and a deepening awareness that my Story had been considered as a quality written piece, with cultural relevance and personal introspection (which are the 3 requirements for a curated Story). 😃
The Story needs to be well written, and appeal to a wide range of people of different ages and genders, and of varied cultural and location backgrounds.
The Story needs to refer to the writer’s personal experiences, and be credible or believable, and add value.
The latter means the readers should be able to take something memorable away from the Story, whether that be advice or recommendations, or an emotional impact, or another positive result.
Note that the Stats page for a Medium Story also gives a graph showing number of Views, and here is the Graph for my curated Story, 3 days after it was curated, on the 10th May.
Yes I know the Read Ratio is low, but I attribute that to curious readers passing by and clicking on my Story title, then getting switched off seeing the length of the article; or just plum changing their mind about even bothering to read some of it.
You know people 😎 they pass by quickly, and unless a topic or the first words are exactly what they need or love to read about in the first few seconds of coming across a written work, they will abandon it.
Such is Life, perhaps also for a Topic which is quite specific or narrowed to those who are curious or interested in how not to feel so overwhelmed.
The snapshot above shows the ‘Views by Traffic Source” on May 12. I promote my Stories on Facebook so that is why Facebook shows as a Source, and perhaps the “email, IM, and direct” Source refers to Medium sending out emails.
The “rsci.app.link” must refer to a referral or access from an “app” on a mobile device.
The “manystories.com” source must mean that someone (Medium?) linked my curated Story to the Many Stories site.
Anyhow, a check of the graph stats showed for my curated Story that on the day it was curated, there were 121 views of this curated Story.
112 views came directly from Medium and 9 were from External Referrals.
The total number of views of all of my Medium Stories for that day was 213 (obtained from the overall Stats page for all Stories, which, for your stats, is accessed under your Avatar, by clicking on “Stats”).
This means that half of the Views of all my Stories that were viewed that day, Tuesday the 7th, were views of the curated Story.
The day after, being 8th May, the graph showed 46 views of this Story, with 2 only directly via the Medium website, and 44 from external sources.
This may mean that after the major impact of Curation, which lasts only 12 to 24 hours, there is a diminishing effect of views from the Medium site and more visits from notifications via emails.
(Don’t ask me what emails, because I have no idea what exactly Medium emails out to who exactly.)
Also I noted on the day that my Story was curated that there were 9 Stories above mine, on the Topic page “SELF”, then when I checked the placement of the Story title on 8th May, it had dropped a lot.
It now had 33 Story titles above it, meaning of course that there are loads of curated Stories, and when your Story is curated, it will very quickly move “down the ladder” on the Topic page. 😢
Now, on the day of curation, 7th May, at 6.30 pm or about 12 hours after, I found that my Story had 8 new “Fans” with a total of 35 Claps only!
Why, oh why?
Simples, as Aleksandr the meerkat would say.
New readers to Medium were browsing the Topic page SELF and actually clicked on my Story Title, read my Story, and showed their appreciation by giving 1 clap (or 2 or 3 maximum).
Once, I was new to Medium and didn’t know that I could clap more than once!
Well, it’s okay with me receiving single claps only 😏because I value even a single Fan and a single Clap.
That’s because I write on Medium to share with who wants to read my writing (not primarily to make money, like so many on Medium, who get really upset about not being curated).
On with the march!
On 8th May, being 1 day after my Story was curated, I noted 46 views of the Story, 44 from Medium and 2 from external sources, meaning via emails or social media accounts that Medium used to “distribute” my Story, and other sources.
On 9th May, being 2 days after my Story was curated, I noted 13 views of the Story, 12 from Medium and 1 externally (roughly 48 hours after curation). The number of views had halved.
10th May: 4 views divided up as 3 directly from Medium and 1 externally. Now the number of Views, 3 days after curation, were one third of the day before, or less than one-tenth of the number of Views on 8th May. 😢
11 May: 3 views divided up as 2 directly from Medium and 1 externally.
12 May: 2 views (via Medium), well whaddya you know, 5 days after curation, my Story title must have sunk to the depths of the SELF Topic page!
Yes, the Law of Diminishing Reads….as “time” marches on! 😲
By late evening Wednesday 8th May the Story had 395 claps and that, I think, means an extra 62 claps likely due to curation (roughly 36 hours after the time of curation, which was Tuesday 8th May 7.30 am my time).
It seems that curation achieved a 15 percent increase in the number of Claps, but I don’t know definitely, as I didn’t have the ability to spy on the Fans who clapped for the Story after the curation time, to ascertain if they found the Story via the SELF Topics page or not.
Summary
In summary, I conclude that having a Medium Story curated will boost the number of VIEWS of your Story within 24 hours or so of curation, and will boost the number of Claps either slightly or a great lot.
The latter, a great lot of claps, will happen if your Story content and message is “universal” and timely enough to appeal to a huge number of enthusiastic readers, who know they can Clap more than once and who bother to do so; and of course it will help you a lot if you have many loyal Followers who give a lot of Claps for most, if not all of your Stories.
Of course, Medium readers can still come across my curated Story by drilling through the Story titles on the SELF Topic page, as Medium pages have infinite scrolling.
They may also find the Story via searching upon relevant Tags or by other means, and I certainly haven’t given up hope that more readers will find “How to stop feeling overwhelmed” and show that they appreciate it.
I have found that Medium Stories don’t have to be in Publications to be curated, and if you join a Facebook support group for Medium writers, you may find people there debating whether “self-publishing” at a particular time (i.e. having a Story on their own Medium Profile or “timeline” / wall) factors into whether their Stories are curated or not.
Also, I have found that some Stories that I have neither put into a Publication OR had curated, have had a lot more views and reads and claps than this Story “How to stop feeling overwhelmed” that was curated! 😲
On May 3rd there were 15 views of my Story, the highest number of views between it being published in the Ascent and being curated, but the fact that up until then it got Views AND Reads AND a lot of Claps shows that even with just a few Views, a good Story can receive a lot of Claps.
The day before curation, there were 333 Claps of my Story. In fact these 333 Claps were attained by a total of just 37 views since the Story was published in the Ascent until the 6th May, averaging 9 Claps per view.
Not a bad “Claps to View” ratio, I think!
It is logical that the read to view ratio, or the number of Reads versus the number of Views, must have been high before curation, but I didn’t record that measure.
What I’m getting at here, is that an interesting, quality Story will get reads and applause, whether it is curated or not.
However, because the World is saturated with online content, it is ESSENTIAL that you “market” or promote your Medium Stories yourself, e.g. through Facebook groups.
Keep in mind that the number of Views of a Medium Story are important, because they may factor into the calculation of your Medium Partner Program (MPP) payment for a Story.
I have 2 Medium Stories that were “self-published” (and by this, I mean I didn’t put them into a Publication, but just published them on my own “wall” or “timeline”) and both received about the same number of Fans and Claps, but the one that I received more payment for under the MPP was the Story with a lot more views! 😃
I’ll leave you with some links to other Stories that I wrote, which you may be interested in, and with a final Graph (taken 8 am on 12 May 2019).
If you are confused about the LIFETIME EARNINGS showing zero, I also am confused, and don’t know what the answer to why this occurs is.
I guess that my earnings are so minuscule, that the software cannot even compute it enough to display it here, haha.
In fact, my MPP dashboard showed on 9 May (my Thursday, but Wednesday 8 May in the USA) that I had earned 47 cents for this Story.
That was my earnings for this Story from Monday 29 April, the date it was published in the Ascent, to Sunday 5 May, which spanned the Medium “pay week”.
Yes I know that $0.47 is not a lot, especially for 333 claps, but luckily I am not dependent upon Medium for an income!
Recall that at the 5th May (before the Story was curated) that the number of Claps was 333.
I will report in a Response to this Story what my curated Story “earns” the next MPP payday, probably not much, being 16 May, which will be based upon calculations made between 6 May and 12 May.
I think that people’s Claps are “weighted” and this means that if someone gives your Story just a few Claps and only gives a few Stories across Medium (so not just your Stories) during a month a few claps each, their Claps for your Story earn you more per clap, relative to the payment to you per clap from someone who claps vigorously for hundreds of Stories each month.
Go figure! 😆
Another way to find out that your Story has been curated is to go to your Stats page, and you will find the Topic name above the title of your Story. I have shown a snapshot from my Stats page below, relevant to “How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed.”
The Stats below are for Number of Views, Number of Reads, the Read ratio (number of reads to number of views) and the Number of Fans (people who clapped for the Story).
So there it is, now you will know something of what to look out for when your Story is curated! 😄
Thanks for reading! You may be interested in the following Stories. 💛 💚
